Orange County Student At Center of FCAT Controversy Dies
Friday, February 7, 2014
By: Alicia Mandigo

An 11-year old Orange county student at the center of an FCAT controversy has died. Ethan Rediske was in hospice with cerebral palsy, but was still expected to take the FCAT. The hope now is that his death will bring about some change.

Orange county school board member Rick Roach says Ethan Rediske is the second Orange county student with a severe health condition that’s been expected to take some version of the FCAT. The other student was born missing parts of his brain. Roach says Ethan Rediske’s mother initially asked for help last year, but this year Ethan was in a morphine coma in hospice and still needed to prove he couldn’t take the FCAT.

 “We’re asking kids to do things that they’re not capable of doing, so it fits into the unreasonable category, it’s not reasonable to ask kids in these kinds of health conditions to do these kinds of tasks,”he says.

Roach says Ethan’s teacher is a devoted educator who was at risk of being penalized if he didn’t take the FCAT. Roach says Ethan’s mother asked him to go Tallahassee with her to lobby lawmakers about changing FCAT requirements for the sick and severely disabled.